The new center will focus on predictive assembly of materials and living materials that combine biological components with engineered structures. <\/p>\n
The MRSEC will support research, student training, and new facilities aimed at developing materials for applications in healthcare, energy, manufacturing, and environmental technologies.<\/p>\n
Source: UC San Diego Today<\/a>.<\/p>\n The National Science Foundation<\/a> has awarded University of California San Diego researchers a six-year $18 million grant to fund a new Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC).<\/p>\n These research centers are transformative for the schools that earn them, putting their materials science research efforts into the global spotlight. In addition to research and facilities funding, MRSEC centers provide sustained research opportunities for both graduate and undergraduate students, and resources to focus on diversifying the pool of students studying materials science.<\/p>\n The UC San Diego<\/a> labs funded by this new MRSEC will focus on two important, emerging approaches to build new materials aimed at improving human lives.<\/p>\n The first research theme is all about developing new ways to control the properties of materials during their synthesis by controlling how they transition, from the smallest atomic building blocks to materials that are large enough to see with the human eye.<\/p>\n The second research theme is focused on creating hybrid materials that incorporate living substances\u2014microbes and plant cells\u2014in order to create materials with new properties.<\/p>\n The new materials developed at UC San Diego<\/a> will be used to improve the speed and accuracy of medical diagnostic tests, enable more effective therapeutics for disease treatment, quickly and efficiently decontaminate chemical or biological hazards, improve batteries, and reduce the cost of key industrial processes.<\/p>\n \u201cThis MRSEC grant is a wonderful affirmation of what we\u2019ve known all along\u2014that UC San Diego<\/a> is a world-class research and education powerhouse in materials science. This grant is going to enable researchers and students from different disciplines to work together and chart the course for important new avenues for innovation in materials science,\u201d said UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla.<\/p>\n At the heart of the new MRSEC are student programs designed to diversify materials science and a strong partnership with the educational arm of San Diego\u2019s Fleet Science Center.<\/p>\n The team weaves 19 UC San Diego<\/a> faculty members and their labs from the Division of Physical Sciences, the Jacobs School of Engineering and the Division of Biological Sciences into a large community of computational and materials science researchers.<\/p>\n \u201cMany of tomorrow\u2019s life-changing discoveries will happen at the intersection of engineering, physical sciences and biological sciences. This is why we pursue such interdisciplinarity here at UC San Diego<\/a>, and this MRSEC is a tangible result of that effort. It is a tribute to the vision of Mike Sailor, Shirley Meng, Andrea Tao and Jon Pokorski to make the connections necessary to build this world-class team across such varied disciplines,\u201d\u00a0said Albert P. Pisano, dean of the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.<\/p>\n This world-class research will directly serve UC San Diego<\/a> graduate and undergraduate students, including transfer students. According to Sailor, one of the unique challenges for transfer students is that they often do not have the time or the training to participate in the rich research enterprise at UC San Diego.<\/p>\n \u201cOur MRSEC summer schools have a specific focus on bringing transfer students into the materials science research community\u2014the intensive workshops are intended to bring them up to speed so that they can seamlessly enter a research lab. Exposure of undergraduates to cutting-edge research is one of the most important activities of the MRSEC, because fluency in research concepts, tools, and techniques is a key element of a well-trained STEM workforce,\u201d said Steven Boggs, dean of the Division of Physical Sciences at UC San Diego<\/a>.<\/p>\n Research Thrust: Predictive Assembly<\/p>\n The \u201cpredictive assembly\u201d research team is working to bring the computational and predictive tools that the pharmaceutical industry has used successfully to design \u201csmall molecule\u201d drugs with particular properties and behaviors into the realm of materials science. The team is led by UC San Diego<\/a> nanoengineering professors Andrea Tao and Tod Pascal.<\/p>\n Learn more about the\u00a0predictive assembly project<\/a>.<\/p>\n Research Thrust: Living Materials<\/p>\n The second UC San Diego<\/a> team is using the tools of the biotechnology revolution\u2014in particular, genetic engineering and synthetic biology \u2013 to build new classes of materials with new kinds of abilities. Materials that can repair themselves are just one example. The team\u2019s big idea is to incorporate living organisms, either from plants or microbes, into their new materials. UC San Diego nanoengineering professor Jonathan Pokorski co-leads this research team, along with co-leader Nicole Steinmetz, also a UC San Diego nanoengineering professor.<\/p>\n Learn more about the\u00a0living materials project<\/a>.<\/p>\n Diversifying the Materials Science Education Pipeline<\/p>\n As part of its core educational mission, the UC San Diego<\/a> MRSEC team is developing a suite of education programs aimed at growing and diversifying the pipeline for materials scientists in the United States. Summer school workshops, for example, are designed to provide trainees with immersive experience in laboratory procedures, advanced instrumentation and computational methods, explained Stacey Brydges, a professor in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at UC San Diego who oversees the educational elements of the MRSEC.<\/p>\n \u201cWe view the summer schools as a transformative mechanism to enhance the training of participants from a broad range of educational levels\u2014from high school to post-graduate,\u201d said Brydges. \u201cWe will offer high school and undergraduate students, with particular opportunities for our transfer students, their first introduction to research. The programs will also give incoming graduate students a quick start on their thesis projects.\u201d<\/p>\n Programs will also provide established industrial and international scientists with an update on the \u201chot topics\u201d by engaging UC San Diego<\/a> MRSEC researchers.<\/p>\n MRSEC facilities<\/p>\n One of the most important drivers of success in materials research today is the availability of cutting-edge instrumentation. The UC San Diego<\/a> MRSEC will bring two new, exciting elements to the campus\u2019 research-facilities ecosystem: the Engineered Living Materials Foundry and the MesoMaterials Design Facility.<\/p>\n \u201cHigh-end computation and synthetic biology are both under-represented in the materials science field, and these are areas where we see our MRSEC facilities poised to make a big impact,\u201d said UC San Diego<\/a> nanoengineering professor Shirley Meng.<\/p>\n She leads the facilities thrust of the MRSEC and is also director of the IMDD. \u201cA major task for our MRSEC is not just to build out the facilities ecosystem but also to train scientists and engineers on how to deploy these tools to enable their research.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Image\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ucsd-grant-for-mrsec-4.jpg\")
The UC San Diego<\/a> professors who make up the leadership team of the UC San Diego MRSEC center are, left to right: Tod Pascal, Andrea Tao, Jon Pokorski, Nicole Steinmetz, Michael Sailor, Shirley Meng and Stacey Brydges.<\/p>\n![\"Image\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ucsd-grant-for-mrsec-6.jpg\")
The living materials research team is using the tools of biotechnology to build new classes of materials that help make people healthier and safer.<\/p>\n![\"Image\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/ucsd-grant-for-mrsec-7.jpg\")
The predictive assembly research team is weaving computational and predictive tools into the realm of materials science in order to create materials with new, useful properties.<\/p>\n